***updated 8/9***
NO ESCAPEOOC thread's on. Have a looksee.
http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=10763.0A freeform, fantasy story of traditional elements: good vs. evil, monsters vs. humans, etc. But with no real good guys; just the innoccent caught between the two, those crushed in the cogs of the war machine. In the initial scenario, a noble family is ambushed by the "monstrous" faction and either slaughtered or raided for captives. The captives are either tormented for amusement or used as playing pieces in the greater conflict... converted to serve as spies, tormented for revenge and to break the spirit of the nobles, etc.
Roles:
Monstrous Lord: Big, frightening, but basically humanoid.
Enforcers: Some sort of supernaturally powerful warriors or tormentors.
Nobles: You get the idea.
Elements: Gothic stone and iron... capture, detention, and induced submission by vile forces... non-consentual acts with powerful, semi-human or human, villains... corruption/psychological conversion, violence, dark ritualism... it's a start.
LOST HIGHWAYPardon the stolen phrase from David Lynch and a dozen pulp authors of yore, if you don't mind.
A girl, let's just call her
the girl for simplicity's sake, is gunning for post-graduate honors at some college, somewhere. Her no-sock, longer-than-is-fashionable haired, Kerouac loving Media professor has built her up with story after story about life on the road, legends of the people, and the fading glory of America's rust-towns, whose stories slink away with every generation softened to white-collar life and bleeding away from the coal-towns and ghost-towns of the once amazing nation.
So professor arranges her to have an internship for a semester, sends her South, sends her West. Sends her out there on a fool's errand.
Except the wrong turn gets her on the wrong highway, into a place where her headlights are the whole world she knows, and what's outside is more frightening by the moment. The dead, the lost, and the shadows rule out there, and there's only one way to make it home...
To finish the trip.
Nothing about this girl is set in stone. She might have company, even. Maybe a friend, a sibling, or a stranger lost out there with her.
She doesn't know, will never know, if she's dreaming, lost in another dimension, or in purgatory. But there will be the faces of the damned, empty and cold, there will be errand after errand of recording the stories... she will have boxes of tapes, a glovebox full of spent 35mm film cans, and a short stack of notebooks stained blue, black, purple, and red with the frantic-scratched words as she teeters on madness.
There'll be sex and violence, sure. Can't resist them. But the horror's the thing... the surrealism. Remember: it's the journey that matters, not the destination.
